The Perseverance Mars rover sails through its initial checkout and activation, beams back some 7,000 photos so far, releases its six-foot robotic arm and takes a short test drive after a major software upgrade after landing, engineers said Friday.
Robert Hogg, the deputy mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said the $ 2.4 billion rover’s scientific instruments have all been checked out, along with an array of weather sensors to monitor the robot’s harsh environment. to hold.
“Everything is going very well on our last mission to Mars,” he said. “Perseverance did an exceptional job during her first two weeks on the red planet … I am happy to report that we took our very first ride on Mars yesterday afternoon.”
NASA / JPL-Caltech
The one-ton rover made a short 4-meter drive, made a 150-degree left turn, then reversed approximately 2.4 meters.
“Our first ride went unbelievably well,” said Anais Zarifian, an engineer in the mobility testbed at Perseverance. She showed a razor-sharp photo, taken by one of the rover’s 25 cameras, showing ribbed tire tracks in the bottom of Mars.
“You can see the wheel marks we left on Mars,” she told reporters. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see wheel tracks, and I’ve seen many. This is just a huge milestone.”
Like the Curiosity rover that landed in another Mars crater in 2012, Perseverance travels at a top speed of just 0.1 mph. But thanks to improvements in the improved navigation software and camera array, “we can really drive five times faster than Curiosity, and are able to drive an average of about 200 meters per (day),” Zarifian said.
Perseverance was lowered to the bottom of Jezero Crater on February 18 at a site now known as Octavia E. Butler Landing, named in honor of the late African American science fiction writer and born in Pasadena.
Deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan announced the honor, saying that Butler’s protagonists “embodied determination and inventiveness, making them a perfect fit for the Perseverance rover mission.”
NASA / JPL-Caltech
The rover’s landing was orchestrated by software designed to meet the challenges of the long seven-month cruise to Mars and then the seven-minute descent to the surface. Once downstairs, engineers faced the somewhat daunting task of flushing out the no longer needed software and loading the programming that will be used for the Surface Science mission.
The software update took several days to complete.
“This is the software that really releases all of the capabilities that Perseverance has available for our surface mission,” said Hogg. “It’s about 16 megabytes, so it’s quite small. But when in use, it has 140 tasks all running simultaneously on the rover’s computer.
“When we did this update we had to be very careful not to have any major issues because you know there is no helpline to call or any way we can run to the rover and hit the big reset button. careful, and it was a great relief for the team to get it done. ”
Scientists study the first images to determine the best path from the landing site to relatively nearby cliffs that mark the eroded edge of an ancient delta where a now vanished river once flowed into Jezero, possibly with traces of past microbial life.
Telephoto photographs of the rover show layered, weather-resistant deposits similar to shale on Earth, often preserving organic carbon and other ‘biosignatures’.
Two possible routes to the delta have been identified, but the science team has not yet chosen the optimal course or identified a suitable area for test flights of an $ 80 million experimental drone still attached to the rover’s abdomen.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
“Two weeks after the mission began, we received approximately 7,000 images from the rover’s cameras, including our first images of some of the geological targets of the exploration that brought the rover to Jezero,” Morgan said. “We are now working with engineers to determine which path is the most efficient, safe and scientifically interesting.”
“And then we get there at the front of the delta. From there we are going to explore the delta and finally end up at the mouth of the river that once flowed into Jezero, where we will probably deposit our very first sample. Depot,” added. Morgan adds.
Perseverance is the first mission to Mars specifically designed to search for evidence of past microbial life. It is equipped with a complex system to collect promising soil and rock samples and deposit them on the surface for ultimate retrieval and return to Earth using a combination of NASA and European Space Agency spacecraft.
On Thursday, NASA announced a contract with Northrop Grumman, worth up to $ 84.5 million, to begin work on the propulsion system needed to launch the recovered samples into Mars orbit following their recovery by another NASA. robber. The European Space Agency is designing a spacecraft to capture the samples and return them to Earth for detailed laboratory analysis by the end of the decade.
“This is one for all ages for JPL and NASA,” said Hogg. “Even though it may seem a long way off, it will pass in the blink of an eye, when we will be able to get these (monsters) back to Earth for scientists around the world to analyze.”